In recent years, a digital camera has been widely used as a next generation camera replacing a silver salt 35 mm film camera. Recently, there has been an increasing reduction in a size, and thinning of a digital camera. Moreover, a camera function (hereinafter called as ‘image pickup module’) has been mounted even in a portable telephone, the use of which has also been increasing widely. For mounting this image pickup module in the portable telephone, an optical system has to be smaller and thinner than an optical system of the digital camera. Particularly, in a zoom lens, the reduction in size and the thinning have been sought. However, a zoom lens having a size reduced to be capable of being mounted in the portable telephone has not been known much.
As a typical means for reducing the size and thinning the zoom lens, the following two means can be taken into consideration. In other words,
A. To use a collapsible lens barrel, and to accommodate the optical system in a thickness (depth) of a casing. This collapsible lens barrel is a lens barrel having a structure in which, the optical system protrudes from a camera casing at the time of taking a picture, and is accommodated in the camera while carrying.
B. To accommodate the optical system in a direction of width or in a direction of height by adopting a dioptric system. This dioptric system is an optical system having a structure in which an optical path (optical axis) of the optical system is folded by a reflecting optical element such as a mirror or a prism.
However, in the structure in which the abovementioned means A is used, the number of lenses forming the optical system or the number of movable lens groups is still large, and it is difficult to carry out the reduction in the size, and the thinning of the casing.
Moreover, in the structure in which the abovementioned means B is used, it is easy to make the casing thin as compared to a case in which the means in the abovementioned A is used, but an amount of movement of the movable lens group at the time of zooming, and the number of lenses forming the optical system tends to increase. Therefore, volumetrically, it is not at all suitable for the reduction in size.